The Guy in the Black Hat

Tag: LARP

  • Teaching Gramsci and Arendt at Wizard School

    “Jeglicher Zauber geht verloren, wenn du versuchst, ihn einzufangen.” –Helga Schäferling What role does “magic” play in our lives? Is magic already suffused with the powers of the mundane? How does magic duplicate and comment upon the logics of neoliberalism already governing us? To what extent can “rebellion” be realized within a left-leaning institution, and…

  • Losing Friends and the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Just a Little Lovin’ Denmark 2015

    “Hat ein einziges [Werk] seinen Zweck erreicht? Haben sie das Rad aufhalten können, das unaufhaltsam stürzend seinem Abgrund entgegeneilt?” –– Heinrich von Kleist When we finish a book, exit a movie theater, let the record needle hit the center label, we might ask ourselves: What did this experience mean? Am I moved? Did the work…

  • American Freeform: A Transatlantic Dialog

    Quiet waves of change have rippled through the role-playing community. On Monday of this week, Lizzie Stark posted an introduction to American freeform on her blog, an entry that codified design practices we’ve been using here in the States since at least the middle of the 00s. As one of the numerous designers whose work she listed,…

  • Immersive Gameplay – Interview with Nathan Hook

    In honor of the release of Bill White’s and my co-edited volume with McFarland, Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media, I am conducting interviews with some of my talented and erudite contributors. The seventh interview is with role-playing designer and writer Nathan Hook. His article “Circles and Frames: The Games Social Scientists Play,”…

  • Evan’s Epic Recap – Role-Playing in Games Seminar and Solmukohta, Finland 2012

    This enormous blog post is dedicated to my entire trip to Finland via Stockholm from April 6-April 17, 2012. The post functions as a therapeutic information dump of the major threads from my journey. It interweaves academic, personal, theoretical and actual details of my trip. Don’t expect great truths, but do expect my impressions and…

  • The Ticking Final Days

    A week left…